Junior pulled over to the side. I backed up to run and jump in, but he grabbed me before I could go over the edge.
People took pictures with their phones like my brother wasn’t drowning.
They gasped and stared and pointed like it was a TV show and not reality.
And whatever good parts of me that still existed, that still believed that people were inherently good and deserved to live—fell in angry shards and sank to the bottom of the Sound with one of my favorite people.
One who was too young to die.
One who seemed to know he was going to his own funeral.
My brother—who took his last breaths alone.
A car.
Twisting metal.
My knees hit the ground as my legs gave out. The sting of gravel through my jeans barely registered as I leaned over and puked.
I heard Junior yelling into his cell phone.
I heard the sirens.
I felt nothing.
So, I sat on my haunches, and I waited for Junior to do what I couldn’t. Make the calls, burn the information, pay off the police.
My phone started ringing. God, not now. Not her.
Violet.
It said, Violet.
I squeezed my eyes shut as tears I didn’t even realize I still had flowed down my face.
She just kept calling.
“Yeah.” I could barely get the word past my lips.
“Hey! I was thinking about coming over again since—” She stopped. “Ash, talk to me, what’s going on? You know you can talk to me about Claire, right?”
I sucked in a shuddering breath. “Not Claire.” I clenched my teeth. “Breaker, it’s Breaker, I don’t think… we couldn’t save him, we can’t save anyone.”
“No.” It was such a quiet no; it was worse than the yelling. “I just saw him, he was fine; he—he wouldn’t leave me like this. Not like this, Ash, not—tell me—I can’t—”
One of the detectives I knew well since we had them placed all over the cities we had dealings in, walked over to us and gave us a sad understanding smile. “It’s already been dealt with. You can go back home.”
People were still scattered everywhere as sirens went off, alerting everyone to the disaster to the tragedy. My heart thudded to a stop in my chest.
Home? What was that anymore? When everyone you love is constantly taken from you?
Junior looked ready to lunge at him. “What the hell do you mean it’s been taken care of?”
He held out his cell.
I put it up to my ear.
“Get back to the house where it’s safe,” Phoenix said in a cold voice void of emotion. “Burn everything in that briefcase, including the tape.”
“Tape?” I repeated my voice sounded foreign to my own ears, hollow like it no longer belonged to me, to this body but someone else, someone else who was going through hell, through unimaginable pain. “I don’t understand?”
“Look at it, and it’s your ass.” He hung up.
I handed the phone back to the detective and shook my head at Junior as we wordlessly got back in our car and drove to the house.
Neither of us spoke.
I was afraid I’d crack.
I needed his anger right now.
Just like he needed mine.
But we had a job to do first.
And blood always came first, even when you wanted to crawl into a ball on the floor and sob your way through life—blood came first.
Violet was at the house when we got there, sobbing on the couch while Izzy and Serena held her.
And King was staring straight at the wall, his jaw clenched as he bounced a ball against it over and over and over on an endlessly repeating cycle until I was afraid I was going to go crazy.
Maksim was pacing.
And I had no purpose other than burning.
Nothing else mattered.
I grabbed the briefcase, pulled out all the letters, and was even more pissed when I realized Violet’s was the lightest.
“I’ll burn everything.” Junior’s voice was barely recognizable from the screaming he’d done. “You give them the letters.”
With shaking hands, I grabbed the letters and dispersed them to each of my friends, my family. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. God, why was this even happening? I couldn’t even look at my sister. I could feel her pain like it was my own.
Like being set on fire with no relief, dying of thirst without water, having your soul stolen never to return.
I saved her for last.
Her broken sobs filled the room as she shoved me away, covering her face with her hands. “Y-you read it.”
With trembling fingers, I opened the simple white envelope that bore her name and slid out the small crisp piece of paper.
“You have been and will always be my best friend. I love you. I’m yours in life, in death, in sickness and in health, I’m yours. Forever. My blood for yours,” I read, my voice heavy with grief.
Why?
WHY!
A scream built up inside my chest like a living breathing monster with teeth as it ripped at my throat over and over again, its nails digging into me from the inside out.